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Are Websockets and WebRTC not realtime enough? They need to bake more, but they're literally standards. I wholeheartedly agree that probably the biggest proble

by avaer 10y ago

Are Websockets and WebRTC not realtime enough? They need to bake more, but they're literally standards. I wholeheartedly agree that probably the biggest problem that needs solving is that of siloed experiences. But this is also something the web solved long ago with URLs and files on the front, and webby APIs on the back. If we invent another protocol to solve this problem, are we not simply creating new silos?

Arathorn 10y ago
Websockets and WebRTC really are not enough at all, and this is a very widely held misapprehension. Websockets (and their HTTP/2 equivalent) are just a dumb pipe for shifting data - just like a TCP socket, but tunnelled over HTTP. Meanwhile WebRTC defines how to encode and transport real-time media streams over the 'net... but deliberately avoids specifying how to discover or signal the existence of those streams in the first place. In analog terms WebRTC is like a phone line without a phone exchange. I agree that the open Web avoids silos through URLs and ad hoc HTTP APIs. But this is insufficient for a hypothetical VR universe of immersive services: you don't want the only way for a user to be able to navigate between services to be to 'click a link'. And it's arguably a failure that almost every single web service ends up publishing its data via an incompatible ad hoc HTTP APIs - for instance, given Facebook, Slack, HipChat and Skype all provide supersets of precisely the same basic functionality, how come each has its own proprietary custom HTTP API to do the same thing? Wouldn't it be better if there was a standard open data fabric into which they exposed their data? The idea here is that VR will suck if it's just a bunch of disconnected apps, and instead you need decentralised primitives for sharing Identity, Avatar properties (e.g. position & orientation), shared VoIP, shared Video, even shared world geometry/assets/physics in order to stitch it together into a coherent experience; both for users or developers. The web was successful because HTML is so simple, forgiving and flexible - and you end up with essentially the minimum successful viable hypertext system. One could probably limp along with a VR Web which is just a bunch of webapps which happen to have chunks of WebVR UI. But it could be so much more, while still being flexible and forgiving and lightweight. At least this is Matrix's hope :)
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  totally off topic, but misapprehension is such an oddball word. It doesn't mean what I would have thought it meant. Totally threw me for a loop and I've added it to my list of words that I think people shouldn't use because there are better more common words to use to express the same idea. Thanks!
- sidcypher 10y ago
  Apologies for nitpicking, but I find it rather important: Websockets are not tunneled over HTTP, they are only negotiated over HTTP. Once you are connected, there is no overhead of sending HTTP headers back and forth.

by avaer 10y ago

Arathorn 10y ago

Websockets and WebRTC really are not enough at all, and this is a very widely held misapprehension. Websockets (and their HTTP/2 equivalent) are just a dumb pipe for shifting data - just like a TCP socket, but tunnelled over HTTP. Meanwhile WebRTC defines how to encode and transport real-time media streams over the 'net... but deliberately avoids specifying how to discover or signal the existence of those streams in the first place. In analog terms WebRTC is like a phone line without a phone exchange. I agree that the open Web avoids silos through URLs and ad hoc HTTP APIs. But this is insufficient for a hypothetical VR universe of immersive services: you don't want the only way for a user to be able to navigate between services to be to 'click a link'. And it's arguably a failure that almost every single web service ends up publishing its data via an incompatible ad hoc HTTP APIs - for instance, given Facebook, Slack, HipChat and Skype all provide supersets of precisely the same basic functionality, how come each has its own proprietary custom HTTP API to do the same thing? Wouldn't it be better if there was a standard open data fabric into which they exposed their data? The idea here is that VR will suck if it's just a bunch of disconnected apps, and instead you need decentralised primitives for sharing Identity, Avatar properties (e.g. position & orientation), shared VoIP, shared Video, even shared world geometry/assets/physics in order to stitch it together into a coherent experience; both for users or developers. The web was successful because HTML is so simple, forgiving and flexible - and you end up with essentially the minimum successful viable hypertext system. One could probably limp along with a VR Web which is just a bunch of webapps which happen to have chunks of WebVR UI. But it could be so much more, while still being flexible and forgiving and lightweight. At least this is Matrix's hope :)

optimuspaul 10y ago
totally off topic, but misapprehension is such an oddball word. It doesn't mean what I would have thought it meant. Totally threw me for a loop and I've added it to my list of words that I think people shouldn't use because there are better more common words to use to express the same idea. Thanks!
sidcypher 10y ago
Apologies for nitpicking, but I find it rather important: Websockets are not tunneled over HTTP, they are only negotiated over HTTP. Once you are connected, there is no overhead of sending HTTP headers back and forth.